


Blue Hour

by etothepii



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-05
Updated: 2008-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothepii/pseuds/etothepii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hour before sunrise, Batman is lonely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Blue Hour 藍色時分](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6962974) by [jls20011425](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jls20011425/pseuds/jls20011425)



> Written for [Knightfest](http://community.livejournal.com/knightfest/profile).

They’re hunting him. The dogs can’t track him, but they still hunt him, scouring the streets on regular patrols, peering into the shadows as if he’ll suddenly surrender. It’s pointless, an exercise in futility. They’ll never find him if he doesn’t want to be found, and he’s already demonstrated his ability to defend himself against them.

In Harvey’s words, Batman has lived long enough to become Gotham’s newest villain, fulfilling the void left when he sent the Joker to Arkham. He understands why they do it. They’re afraid of him, and he doesn’t begrudge them their fear.

But he’s tired. He doesn’t want to be the villain, and while he’s willing to play the part if that’s what it’ll take to protect Gotham, it still hurts. He’d lay down his life. He’d squander all of Bruce Wayne’s fortune. He’d bleed and chase and fight for Gotham’s children, her purity.

In return, they hunt him.

The only one who doesn’t want him imprisoned is standing next to the ruins of the smashed signal light. There is an unlit cigarette in his hand, held loosely between his first two fingers, and he is gazing at the sky. Batman wonders what he’s looking for.

“I know you’re there,” Gordon calls out, and Batman steps out of the shadows. Gordon nods, unsurprised.

As Batman watches, he extracts a lighter from his pants pocket and sticks the cigarette between his lips. Batman’s mesmerized by the flicker of fire, a vivid contrast to the blacks and grays he’s become accustomed to. There’s no color in darkness, and it winks out of existence too quickly.

Gordon inhales deeply. He makes a soft hum of satisfaction as he exhales, eyes drifting shut. Batman finds it to be a strangely compelling sight. “It’s not safe for you here.”

“I know.” It’s not safe for him anywhere, and he says so. The thought makes him feel strangely hollow.

“I’m sorry.” Gordon’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye. A moment passes, then two, before he breaks the silence. “Would you like a cigarette?”

Bruce doesn’t smoke. Batman’s never been asked. “Thank you,” he decides, and takes the proffered smoke.

“Do you have a light?”

He doesn’t, but Gordon does. He leans forward, lowering his head, and dips the end of the cigarette into the tiny flame. Gordon’s hand is cupped around it to protect against the breeze, and Batman can feel the nearly tangible proximity of Gordon’s fingertips to his cheek.

It feels startlingly intimate.

The first breath makes him cough and choke. The embarrassment that tingles on his cheeks, thankfully, is hidden by the cowl. Gordon chuckles, but when he speaks, his voice is friendly. Batman remembers a coat draped over the shoulders of a young boy everyone else had forgotten, and warm eyes, in a world where everything else had been far away and cold.

“Don’t breathe too deeply. Just pull the smoke into your mouth and hold it there. Savor it.”

The next breath is easier, as is the one after that, and Batman watches tendrils of smoke disperse in the air. When Gordon finishes his cigarette and starts to pat his pockets for more, Batman wordlessly offers his own -- more than half its length remains.

Gordon accepts it with a nod. He takes a deep drag, and sighs. “My wife, Barbara, she hates it when I smoke. I don’t do it around the house.”

“It’s not a good habit for a cop.”

“I know. I try not to do it too often.”

Batman nods, and they lapse into silence. He finds it strangely peaceful to stand on the roof with Gordon. Relaxing. He hasn’t felt peaceful in a long time. Gordon finishes the second cigarette and stubs it out. He slides his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“Is there a reason you’re here tonight?”

 _I’m lonely_. _I had nowhere else to go._ “Batman doesn’t go away just because someone wants to stop him.” He’d let himself be seen again, tonight. Even when Gotham rejects him, the lurking specter of the Batman is enough to make criminals think twice.

“You don’t have anyone to go home to?”

“No,” Batman says, though he knows he shouldn’t. Every piece of information Gordon knows about him is another filter that will narrow the list of his potential identities, until Bruce Wayne is the only one left. He can’t let that happen. Forced between Batman and Bruce Wayne, he isn’t sure who he’d choose anymore, which would live and which would die.

Not without Rachel.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Isn’t it? I let you take responsibility for the murders. I could have let Harvey...” Gordon trails off, shaking his head. He couldn’t have. They couldn’t have, and they both know it. Gotham needs Harvey as he’d been in life, not as he’d been at his death, broken and dragged down by the Joker. And now Gotham needs a villain, a living one, and they both know that villain needs to be him.

“No. Not if we want to bring Gotham out of the darkness. We both want this. We _need_ it.”

Gordon gives him a sideways glance, then looks at him full on, eyes intent. “Do you have anyone? You seem very...”

 _Alone,_ Batman finishes in his mind. He thinks about it. Before, he’d had Rachel. She’d been enough, even though she hadn’t known about Batman, not in the way he’d needed her to know. Her absence has left a gaping hole in him, somewhere he can’t find, but he knows it’s there.

It sneaks up on him sometimes, when he’s not expecting it.

Who does he have? Alfred, he supposes. Lucius. There’s no one else, and they are more guardians than friends. They’re not equals. And he’s never had a lover, he realizes. Bruce Wayne has dalliances, indiscretions, _flings_. Batman has only himself. It surprises him that he isn’t surprised.

“I know.”

~~~~

When Gordon steps out of the stairwell and onto the roof, Batman has been waiting for three hours. The moon is low in the sky and the earliest of the birds are beginning to stir. Gordon’s normally neat hair is disheveled, and his eyes are weary. He gait lacks its usual smooth confidence, and when he reaches the shattered spotlight, Batman slides out of the shadows to stand next to him.

Batman looks at the shards of glass and the shape of the dented metal bat. It looks like he feels. “How is he?”

There is something indefinable in Gordon’s voice when he says simply, “Dead.”

Batman’s eyes slide shut behind their mask. “I’m sorry. How?”

“The fall gave him internal injuries, and the bones of the broken leg cut through too many blood vessels. The doctors couldn’t stop him from bleeding to death. What happened?”  
  
 _Why didn’t you save him?_ “His partner was chasing me.” If not for the enforced coarseness, Batman knows his voice would be as numb as he’s feeling. “I used a grappling hook to get on the roof. I ran, but he must have taken a shortcut, or waited for me, because he was close behind me. I jumped onto another building. He tried to jump too.

“He hadn’t been shouting, or shooting, and I didn’t know he wasn’t behind me until I heard him hit the ground. I jumped down as soon as I realized he fell, but there was nothing I could do. I -- I tried --” Abruptly, he realizes his voice is cracking, trembling, and that Bruce Wayne’s words are coming from Batman’s figure, small and weak.

Gordon doesn’t seem to notice the lapse, or if he does, he’s politely ignoring it. He’s surveying the clouds instead, face closed. Batman watches Gordon’s eyes scan the night sky slowly as they follow a low-flying plane. Gordon takes a breath. He sounds relieved, and briefly, Batman wonders what the rookie’s partner had told him. “Then it wasn’t your fault.”

“It was. I brought him up there, I ran from him. He fell because _I was there_.” Batman might not have pushed him down, but he’d as good as done so. If the boy (not even a man, really, too youthful and eager, right up until his death) had only been injured instead -- broken limbs, a concussion -- it would have been... okay. Acceptable. Part of the job, and they’d expect it if they were going to hunt him.

But no one deserves to _die_ because of him. Not even criminals, not even the Joker. There’s a sick irony in his first murder being a policeman, he thinks. Maybe what Gotham believes of him will become the truth, some day. Maybe he’ll forget about it. Maybe it’ll be covered up so deeply that no one else will have to know. Maybe he’s just making excuses so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for what happened.

Batman’s too close to this for Bruce Wayne to safely interfere. Bruce Wayne needs to deflect suspicion from himself, and the only way to do that would be to not know or care that it ever happened. Batman won’t have to pay for his crimes, and neither will Bruce. Bruce won’t have to do _anything_. Bruce will have to do _nothing._

All those billions lying around in bank accounts and he can’t _use_ them, because there’s no way the people of Gotham would believe a billionaire playboy is capable of being unselfish enough to give money to the family of a dead cop.

Batman hatesthe people of Gotham for trapping his actions almost as much as he hates Bruce Wayne for letting himself stay trapped.

A hand falls on his shoulder, and he startles, head whipping around to stare at it. People don’t touch Batman. They don’t get _close_ enough to touch Batman. Except Gordon has. Gordon’s touching him now. Gordon’s looking at him, not speaking, and his eyes are full of -- something Batman’s unfamiliar with -- _compassion_ , maybe, or _sympathy_.

It -- it’s strange, unexpected, and Batman doesn’t know why he feels so disconcerted by the simple gesture, but he does. Gordon’s standing too close to him now, well within his personal space, and somehow, he can’t pull his eyes away from Gordon’s _mouth_. Gordon’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, gaze becoming heated, and Batman knows they’re thinking of the same thing, of how _easy_ it would be, to close the space between them and find comfort in each other. Don’t they deserve to share a small moment of comfort?

But a beat passes, then two, and Gordon takes his hand off Batman’s shoulder. Batman can imagine the sharp crackof their unspoken connection breaking apart, plasticine putty snapping apart with too much force in too little time, and he reacts impulsively to prevent it.

“Wait --” he says, and leans forward.

As far as kisses go, it’s not extraordinary. It’s practically chaste, just the press of warm lips against warm lips, and a strange unfamiliarity as Gordon’s moustache brushes against his upper lip and nose. When he tries to deepen it, wanting _more_ , Gordon parts his lips and lets him _in,_ and he groans. He didn’t -- he didn’t _know_ how much he’s wanted this, but he has, and the thought wraps around him with an intensity that startles him.

Gordon puts two hands on his chest and shoves him away. “Stop,” he murmurs in a low, hoarse voice that makes Batman _ache_ with wanting. “We can’t do this.”

He’s right, of course, and the words snap Batman back into reality. “I --” Bruce stops, and Batman clears his throat, closes his eyes for a moment. Bruce Wayne can’t be here right now. “I know. I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

“I’m married. I have a wife.”

Batman nods. “I know.”

Of course he knows. It’d been... a lapse. It never should have happened. Batman isn’t, _can’t be_ , involved with anyone, and especially not men. Not like that. And neither can Police Commissioner Gordon. They belong to Gotham, the two of them, and Gotham’s the only one that matters -- the only one that _can_ matter, if they want to save her. Appearances matter. Reputations matter.

What he feels for Gordon _doesn’t_ matter.

A part of him wishes it did, but a part of him still wishes his parents were alive, too.

Gordon sighs heavily, and drags a weary hand over his face. He readjusts his glasses, and smoothes his moustache with confident, agile fingers. Batman’s fingers twitch with the urge to reach out. His fingertips brush against the inside of his gloves, and his hands curl into fists at his sides. Now that it’s happened, he can’t stop _thinking_ about it, re-experiencing it.

Gordon’s eyes drop to Batman’s hands, then flicker up to his mouth. His gaze lingers until Batman turns away, heat thrumming in his body, hidden by the suit. “You should go. _I_ should go,” Gordon says softly, apologetically. “The sun will come up soon.”

When it does, the day will start and Batman will disappear, leaving only Bruce. Bruce, who hasn’t stopped mourning, who misses his father and mother and Rachel and sometimes, even Harvey. Bruce, who cares only about his butler and sometimes his business manager. But Bruce, at least, won’t miss Gordon. His fingertips won’t drift to his lips, and he won’t lose himself in the remembrance of smoke and ashes on his tongue. He won’t wonder _what if_ , or _maybe_ , or _why not_.

The night is just beginning to fade, and Batman is already gone.

 _The cupped flame,  
the extended sigh of smoke in the shadows  
of a hundred doorways.  
Go home to your wives, go home._  
\- August Kleinzahler


End file.
